


Thicker Than Water

by HamiltonTrashPanda



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: F/M, Family, Family Angst, Family Drama, Family Fluff, Haphephobia, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Letters, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-26
Packaged: 2021-03-27 12:34:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30122844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HamiltonTrashPanda/pseuds/HamiltonTrashPanda
Summary: Her name is Clara Rietveld. She was married to Vidar Rietveld, a farmer who was tall as he was witty. She had two boys, Jordan and Kaz. It was a family. Clara, Vidar, Jordan and Kaz.---Or, someone thought dead isn't as dead as it may seem.
Relationships: Jesper Fahey/Wylan Van Eck, Kaz Brekker/Inej Ghafa
Comments: 37
Kudos: 82
Collections: SIX OF CROWS FICS





	1. Chapter 1

* * *

Part One

* * *

Her name is Clara Rietveld. She was married to Vidar Rietveld, a farmer who was tall as he was witty. She had two boys, Jordan and Kaz. It was a family. Clara, Vidar, Jordan and Kaz. 

Vidar had told his boys that Clara, Mama, had just left one day. That wasn’t the truth. Sweet Ghezen, Vidar knew it would hurt less than the truth. Because how do you tell your little boys, 4 and 7, that slavers roamed the country? That you hadn’t been quick enough?    
  


Maybe they noticed the other people who left. Little Kaz certainly did, pouting when the young baker who always came by to give him treats never came around again. Maybe Jordan, Jordie, noticed that the teacher's assistant was gone.

Clara, Elliot, and Miro were three of many. Three more country-side families to grieve their children, their partners, their parents.

Clara had survived though. She and Elliot had been enslaved under the same house on the frigid north-west coast of Ravka for ten years until the master of the house got mad and lovely Elliot was killed by the man’s cruelty. 

He’d left Clara alone for many years. She had grown used to bowing her head and whispering her little boys’ names in the dead of night, and thinking of Vidar’s coarse hands. But the man had turned his eye to her as the war grew direr and direr, as his home was threatened and he looked for quick release. He had no wife. He’d already killed one man.

For the five years after Elliot, it bled on.

Until from that bastard came a daughter. It was high risk, but her master would not let her abort. So she suffered through the labour, but it all felt okay when she held a child again. With soft, rosy cheeks, and dark hair and eyes, she looked nothing like her half-Fjerdan father. She looked purely, Kerch. She looked like Jordan and Kaz had when they were newborn babes. She named her Aleid.

The master did not like that. So he threw the woman out, and her dark-haired babe and she were forced to survive the streets. She spent almost six years in boarding houses across the coast, working odd jobs. 

One day, days before Aleid was to turn six, while she waited tables, a contingent of men, dressed in uniform marched in. The place she worked was staffed mainly by women like her, women running from their masters. 

They froze, watching as the main captain stepped into the owner’s office. The owner was an older woman named Zora, whose dark hair never seemed to grey, but with deep lines around her eyes and mouth.

They stayed in there for almost an hour and Clara winced at every raised voice that came through the wood. The other men surprised her though, as they sat quietly at the tables, asking only for water from their hosts.

The door opened as Clara’s back was to it, and she wiped a glass down. Zora’s deep voice calls her name, and she looks over her shoulder, hesitating at the way Zora suddenly looks like she’s aged a decade.

“Clara, child,” She repeats, “Come here.”

Clara sets the glass down, not bothering to remind Zora that she is almost fifty. She steps lightly over to the office, stepping inside. The man sits at the chair in front of the desk, two fingers resting on the sides of his creased brow.

“If you would please sit, Miss Rietveld,” She freezes, not knowing how he got that name. He smiles reassuringly at her, and she sits delicately, watching him with a spooked expression. 

“Three months ago , Fammus Petrovich died.” She freezes at the name of her former master, which the man seems to note. “We talked to his staff to discern if he had any heirs and also to investigate some rumours.”

She looks at him in fear, thinking of little Aleid at the public school down the road. “Miss Rietveld, please do not worry.” Zora squeezes her shoulder, signalling that she trusts this man. The man stands and paces, “Mister Petrovich was suspected of convoluting with Fjerda and being apart of the slave trade.”

“I spoke to one of his servants and she spoke of you, Clara Rietveld. Said that Petrovich had a child with you, his only heir, and threw you out.”

“What do you want from me?” 

“Miss Rietveld, how did you end up in Ravka?” He asks with a sigh, sitting down and pulling his chair closer. She shakes in her chair, balling her fists in her apron.

“Miss Rietveld?” He repeats.

“Slavers came to my home, in the middle of the day. They took many people from my village and sold us all across the world. I was sold into Mas—Mister Petrovich’s home. He killed my friend.” Her voice shakes with every word, and she latches her eyes on the wall behind his head. 

“Did you have a child with him?” He asks. Clara nods, and he sighs.

“Miss Rietveld, I need you to know that this child is the sole heir to his fortune. He has no other heirs, no extended family that by the law of Ravka, can claim it. Obviously, you would be in charge of the estate until your child comes of age, but…” He trails off. 

Clara knows what this may mean. She will have money to go home, see her boys, who both must be all grown up now. She wonders if they’re married, or even if Vidar has remarried. But she’ll get to go home.

“Additionally,” he says after a moment, “Law states we must give you enough money to return to your home. Where are you from, Miss?”

Home. Home. Home. “A village outside of Lij, in Kerch.” He nods, giving her a warm smile.

“Where is your child now?”

“Aleid? Well, she’s at the school, down the road.”

“Miss, as Aleid is heir to a very large sum of money, and as you and she are now under the protection of the Ravkan government, I must request you bring her here, where we know she will be safe,” She nods and stands. He follows suit. 

“May I accompany you, Miss?” She nods, and they step into the main hall. He gives two of his men orders, and they nod. She pulls on her wool coat with shaking hands. One of the other waitresses catches her eye, pointing at her and then the man before giving a thumbs up.

_ Do you trust him? _ Clara nods and smiles at her concern. The man has pulled on his coat, and they leave the warm building together.

“I am afraid I didn’t introduce myself, Miss,” he says suddenly. “I am Captain Yakov Zaytsev.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Captain,” She says with a smile, which Yakov returns. “And call me Clara.” He dips his head in acknowledgement. 

They walk to the small school in silence, and a bell rings as she opens the front door. The receptionist looks up, “Ah Miss Rietveld! What can I do for you?”

“I need to check Aleid out if you please.” The woman nods, writing something down before handing a pen and paper to her. Clara rights down her daughter’s name, the time, and signs it, before handing it back to the other woman.    
  


“I’ll go get her,” She says, standing up and heading through a door. A few minutes later, Clara hears her daughter’s quick footfalls, and her daughter throws open the door and runs into Mama’s waiting arms.

She picks the little girl up, resting her against her hip. An entire life on a farm, as a servant, and in the workforce have made her strong. She smiles at her girl, and she knows, deep down, that the world is going to be okay again.

♛♢♛

It takes nearly a year and a half for all the legalities around Aleid and the fortune to settle over, but the second it does, Clara and her book first passage to Kerch. Little Aleid is so excited to go to the place she’s only heard of in midnight fairy tales, and Clara cannot wait to be home.

She sends a letter ahead, and that is the first sign something is wrong. She gets no reply. But she brushes it off and keeps her chin up as she heads home, her daughter's hand in hers.

She comes home, and an old friend recognises her despite it all, shrieking her name, and holding her close. He dodges her questions and brings her to what she knows to be her family home. There she reunites with her brother, and her ageing parents and her other siblings come quickly. 

She starts with where she was taken, and the stories from the past Twenty-Three years. Her father whispers a prayer as she speaks of her servitude, but his sorrow soon turns to happiness at the story of the fortune his daughter and granddaughter now possessed. Her whole family is overjoyed. 

That is the last of her happiness, as she turns the conversation to the family yet to show. She stares in silence as her brother tells her of Vidar’s fate. Of her boys who went north in search of fortune. Of someone buying the home that she got the day she and Vidar married, a week after they were both eighteen. Her world comes crumbling down. 

“There is always—” Her mother tries to say, but her brother cuts her off, telling her not to worry her more. It fails, and Clara breaks down crying on the sofa, Aleid and her cousin's laughter carrying from the outside.

Her family leaves her be, but her mother Ilse stays, laying a hand on her daughter's shoulder, rubbing shoulders. “Vidar,” she moans, clutching at the necklace she bought a few months back, and the V, that hangs from it. Her wedding ring was taken by Petrovich, and Captain Zaytsev is yet to find it in his endless amount of jewellery if it was not destroyed.

“What were you saying earlier, Ma? You were saying there was always something, what were you talking about?” She sniffles. Ilse sighs, and gently helps her daughter up.

“Come with me, my love.” Clara wipes her tears with her sleeve again and lets herself be led down the hall, towards if she remembers correctly, is the study. She remembers sitting on top of her mothers desk, kissing Vidar, and another round of tears comes.

Ilse rubs her back, opening the door, and guiding her broken-hearted daughter to sit. She shuffles through her drawer, pulling out the manila file of the boy she’s suspected to be their grandson for almost ten years. 

“Clara…” her daughter looks up at her, glancing at the folder as she slides the newspaper clipping with the photo on it. “There is a man in Ketterdam, who is probably Kaz.” She hands the clipping to her.

She watches her daughter's face carefully. Anguish, grief, and fear cross her face in a matter of moments as she sees the face of a boy who looks so much like his father, it is unreal. It all gives way to confusion and panic as she reads about the man, ‘Kaz Brekker’.

“That’s my boy,” She whispers. “But it cannot— _ my boy. _ ” Her voice cracks.

Ilse knows exactly what that clipping says. It’s from about a year ago, detailing his crimes, his murders, the empire he’s built from the streets of Ketterdam. The details are heinous, but she recognises the little boy she knew in the actions. Sees his mother, his father, even herself in his choices, his calculations. In the very fibre of it all. 

“And what of Jordan, what of Jordie?” She says, but Ilse shakes her head. There is no hint of him.

Clara weeps, pouring over the clippings, the photos, the legal documents. Trying to find her boy in a demon, and hating it every time she does. Kaz Brekker is Kaz Rietveld. There is no doubt in her mind.

“Who bought the farms?” She says softly.

Ilse smiles now, remembering the minute she learned the name of the man who bought the Rietveld farm. “A man named...Johannus Rietveld. It was probably Kaz.”

Clara laughs, tears dripping down her face. She whispers something to herself, wipes away her tears, and stands. “I’m going to write him a letter. A letter with things only I, or we could know,” she proclaims.

Ilse won’t deny she has thought of doing that before. Thought of reaching out to one of the only connections she had to her lost daughter for years, but fear always took her over. She has heard every story, every myth, every rumour. 

But she sees the determination in the set of her jaw, and she sighs. “He may not reply, my daughter.”

“I’m his mother. He better reply.” Ilse laughs, and in the light of an oil lamp, they write a letter to a man they know but do not.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaz gets the letter.

* * *

Part Two

* * *

They sit on the thin bed next to each other, sorting through mail, knees brushing. A letter opener rests on him, the unopened mail next to him, and a pile of junk mail was thrown into his bin. A pile of important letters is by her side, as she looks them over herself.

They don’t talk, content to read and be next to one another. Occasionally, they’d talk over a letter, but then they’d fall back into their silence. It’s...nice. 

Picking up one of the last letters in the pile, he pauses as he sees his name on it, written in a distantly familiar looped handwriting. Stranger still, it just says ‘Kaz’, with no added last name.

He picks up the letter opener, hesitating as he turns it over and sees the red wax seal. There was something, something about it, that ringed some distant, half gone memories. His stomach sinks, and he carefully breaks the seal.

Inej glances at Kaz, noting the bob of his Adam's apple as he breaks this letter's seal. She watches his dark eyes rove over the letter, jaw slowly falls open, sweat begins shimmer on his brow. Inej sets down the letter she was reviewing.

“ _What the fuck?_ ” Kaz whispers.

“Can I see?” Inej asks, curious.

Kaz doesn’t answer and begins to read the letter again, shifting where he sits on his mattress. His shoulders started to shake slightly as he read more before his hand fell limp and he leaned back, hitting his head on the wall. He winces, taking a shuddering breath.

Inej slowly pries the paper from his hand, squeezing his gloved hand once and reading.

The words pass by her, and she registers each one of them in a shocked stream. _This has to be some cruel joke,_ she thinks, _this cannot be true_. But at the same time; _If this is true, this is the most I’ve ever learned about him in one sitting._

“Kaz?” She asks, her breath shaking. “Is this true?”

He nods, and the world shatters. 

♛♢♛

An hour later finds them in the parlour of the Van Eck mansion, Kaz slouched against the velvet couches, dark eyes burning holes into the letter on the table. Inej sits by his side, knowing how hard it was to even pull the letter out for their friends.

“Well fuck,” Jesper says, laughing incredulously, glancing at Kaz. There’s an edge of hysteria in the room, in the way Jesper can’t sit still, in the darkness of Inej’s eyes, in the distance between Kaz’s.

Nina is perched across from them, Matthias leaning behind her. Kaz is grateful for him, for what has to be the first time, and his silence. It’s something Kaz needs right now, though he’ll never admit it, of course.

“You should write her back,” Nina says after a minute.

“No shit,” Kaz snaps, slouching further, as Wylan comes back into the room, a few bottles of beer in hand. The bottles are passed out, Kaz downing a good amount within seconds. He continues to glare off into space, glaring at nothing.

A conversation around something picks up around him, but all Kaz can feel is the rising waters, and the words are drowned out by his head repeating four words over and over again.

_I am your mother._

_Sweet fuck_ , he needs a nice punch in the jaw or a bullet in the gut, anything to distract from this hellhole. He glances at Jesper's pistols at his hips, clenching his jaw and looking away. The world blurs on.

He feels something hit his knee and he snaps to attention, eyes meeting a pair of dark suns he knows all too well. He looks around wildly, now noticing that there are only two people left in the room.

“You dozed off,” She tells him. He nods, grabbing his almost empty beer bottle and downing the rest. “How are you feeling?”

He barks out a laugh, almost hesitating when he sees the intent on her face, _that look_. But he presses on, replying cooly, “Fine.”

“ _Kaz_.”

“What do you want me to say?” He rasps, “Scared? Lost? Sweet Ghezen, Inej—” He freezes, the world alight with the flames of his pained fear. He takes a shaky breath, the words coming out on the exhale of his breath “I don’t know. I don’t know how I feel, how to feel.”

“My Da always told me Ma just up and left. And then this,” he gestures in the general direction of the letter, “Shows up and this woman claims to be my mother, says she was sold into indentured slavery the same way you were, says I have a baby sister! A baby sister!”

He chuckles uneasily, shifting slightly, aware of her heavy gaze on him. “A baby sister,” he repeats, much softer this time. 

“What’s her name, again?”

“Aleid,” Inej repeats the name, turning the vowels and constants over her tongue. 

“How old?”

“Seven or eight, I think.” Inej nods.

“You want to write her back, right?” Kaz nods, glancing at the letter. Inej grabs it, reading it over one more time. “Let's see, where have you been the last few years? Where is...Jordie?”

Kaz groans, leaning his head back, “Hell and heaven.”

Inej sighs, shaking her head, “Kaz, work with me.”

“You want me to tell my Mom it all?” He spits. “Da’s death? Ketterdam? Pekka _fucking_ Rollings? The Queens Lady? _The Reapers Barge?_ The murders, the cons, the violence, brick by _fucking_ brick?”

“Does she not deserve your truth?”

“It’s not my truth, it’s my shame. I can’t—this I cannot do.”

“Yes, you can. Give her your truth, your shame, the skeletons in the closet. All of it, without armour. You can do it,” she hands him a pen, which he gently takes, turning it over before meeting her eyes.

He knows what he must say. _Jordie is dead. I’m a murderer. I have blood-stained hands, a throne of lies and deceit._ There is so much to admit, so much to tell, so much water between them. Too much.

Inej gives him a piece of paper. He takes it, takes a breath, and writes.

♛♢♛

His reply arrives almost a month after her initial letter, and Clara takes it in her hands from the mail carrier eagerly. Her name is written in a spidery scrawl on the envelope, and she pulls out the hefty letter as she walks back inside to her childhood bedroom, sitting on the bed and starting to read.

And read.

And read.

And read.

The world crashes and pounds around her, reading her boy tell her everything. He starts it with a joke, and she can feel the pain interlaced as he says, _Inej, a friend of mine, said to tell the truth, but I’m no good at that._

She wonders who Inej is, especially as Kaz mentions her a lot; Inej said this, Inej helped with this, Inej did this. There’s a fondness that warms Clara’s heart against the bloody ice around it. 

Rage courses through her body at Pekka Rollings, _Jakob Hertzoon_ . Kaz is cruel in his words, especially when it comes to this man, and the hell Kaz bent fills Clara with a dark pride. _Brick by brick, I swore to destroy that son of a bitch_ , he told her, _and I did. Got him to beg on his knees to spare his boy, to regret every word he’d ever said about legacy._

_And he couldn’t remember Jordie’s name._

_I hope that one day, Inej will cut his heart out. She told him she would. But sweet Ghezen, I’ll make him say Jordie’s name if it’s the last thing I ever do._

She’s at war with herself, both terrified of this boy and his violence, but glad he marched on. Glad that there was something he could cling too in the dark waters of his past, no matter the moral repercussions. 

_Revenge is my god._

And Clara understood why.

♛♢♛

“Mama?”

“Yes, Aleid?”

“When am I going to meet Kaz?”

“We’ll see honey, Kaz is a very busy person.”

“I want to meet him.”

Clara kisses her daughters soft hair, biting back the tears that overflow from writing her response. “I do too, my child.”

“Can I read his letter?”

“No honey, I’m sorry.”

“Why not?”

Clara looks at Aleid, and her wide, dark eyes, searching for an answer from her mom. “Mama?”

“You’ll understand one day, my love,” Clara brushes a hair off Aleids face, smiling as her daughter lays across her lap. She runs her pinky from the forehead to the tip of her nose, relief filling her as Aleid starts to drift off.

“I love you, Mama. And Kaz too, make sure to tell him that.”

“I will, love.”

“I will.”

♛♢♛

“She loves you,” Inej tells Kaz again.

Kaz glances up over his newspaper at where Inej is perched on the window sill, reading the newest letter. Kaz rolls his eyes, “She’s infatuated, and she’s never met me.”

“Are you planning to change that anytime soon?”

Kaz shrugs non committedly, and Inej frowns. “She’s your sister, you silly boy.”

“I’m older than you.”

“Oh, whatever. If you do meet her, you better not be an ass,” Inej warns, pulling a knife out to point at Kaz.

“Of course, of course. Can you let me read?”

“No. Your little sister loves you and that is the sweetest shit I’ve ever seen.”


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

Part Three

* * *

They’re going to meet in Lij, the largest village in the area Kaz grew up in. He goes south with Inej at his side, searching for some form of comfort from her. They arrive the day before and stay at a hotel his mother booked for him.

And for the first time in over almost 20 years, he calls himself Kaz Rietveld. The receptionist hands him the keys, eyeing his leather gloves as he takes the keys, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

Their room is thankfully on the first floor, and he sits on the edge of the bed for most of the night, trying to distract himself from the anxiety. He and Inej grab a quick dinner, a couple sitting in the corner of the dining hall, faces turned away and pressed close to hide the movement of their lips as they speak.

That night, the two of them lay in separate beds, Kaz staring at the ceiling. He hears the steady rhythm of Inej’s breathing, tethering himself to it as he closes his eyes and eventually falls into a fitful sleep, plagued with shadowed figures.

Dawn comes too soon. He bathes, trying to calm his racing heart with beads of cold water. Water has always been his enemy, but now it reminds him of who he is. He is the bastard of the barrel, and he won’t be swayed by this.

He adjusts his dark clothes in the mirror, pausing when he feels Inej behind him. Her arms, slowly, carefully, wrap around him. He breathes in deeply, savouring the touch, remembering to associate touch with good things, good memories, not the bad.

“Are you ready?” She asks him quietly, as he turns around and she fixes his collar a bit.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” He admits as Inej beats the non-existent dust off his coat.

“You look handsome, Kaz.”

His lips quirk into what could almost be considered a smile. “Thank you.”

They leave the hotel, heading to a café in the centre of Lij, where they plan to meet. Just as they’re about to turn the corner, Kaz hesitates on the sidewalk, causing Inej to glance at him. 

“What?” She asks.

His breaths are growing rapidly, and she can see the sweat beading on his hairline, but that cannot be from the non-existent heat. He looks around wildly, opening his mouth to speak, but no words can be forced out.

“Kaz?”

He shakes his head. “I can’t do this,” He whispers.

“You have done a hundred jobs, my love. Cracked the ice court, outsmarted an entire city. You can do this, I know.”

“I can’t—”

“I know you. You can do anything you put that demon mind of yours to, and this is no different.”

“It’s my _mom_. What if she hates me? I’m not the boy she left, sweet Ghezen, I hate this.” He runs a hand through his hair, and Inej takes him by the wrist, gently squeezing as she brings her hand down. He watches the path of his hand with wide eyes.

“You can.”

“By all the Saints, I know you can.”

♛♢♛

Clara sits at the table with Aleid, who is happily reading away at her book of Kerch fairy tales. She catches a glimpse of a nutcracker as Aleid presses the book down to take a sip of her apple juice.

Clara looks out the window for the approach of her boy, both excited and nervous. Aleid just reads away, unconcerned with the world. 

Clara remembers how Aleid came home a few weeks prior confused at the stories she had heard of Kaz Brekker from her classmates. “They call him a demon, Mama? Is he a demon?” Clara had told her no, but the bitterness remained. Clara would always know a different Kaz from who her classmates would be raised to know as the enemy. 

Clara’s heart leaps into her throat as she sees a man turn the corner, a woman by his side, heads tilted to one another. Some sixth sense, deep within her, knows who that is, who approaches.

She straightens, a thousand things she wants to say rushing in. She glances around at the relatively empty café, wondering what these people will think when they see her and Kaz meet for the first time in...23 years.

_Ghezen_.

The bell to the door rings as they enter, and Clara stands. She meets her son's eyes, so much like his fathers, so much it hurts. They stand and stare for a moment before Clara runs to her boy.

He’s the one who hugs her tight, surprising her and even himself. Her tears come first, but he’s the one who clings to her as she runs her hands through his short, dark hair. Eventually, they sit at the table.

And he doesn’t stop staring at Aleid. He looks partly lost, partly scared, and there’s a deep threaded sadness weaved into him. Clara introduces herself to Kaz’s companion, the elusive Inej he spoke so highly of. 

He reaches his hand out, gloved in leather, out to Aleid, who looks up from her book. He smiles at her, flicking his hand, making a coin appear. Aleid’s face widens in shock, and Inej and Clara smile. 

He hands her the coin, which she takes gently. “How did you do that?”

“That’s a secret,” He tells her, a peculiar sadness in his eyes. 

Clara talks with him, trying to know him. He’s guarded, even to her, and she has the distinct feeling talking about everything is much harder than it was to write it down. Especially when it comes to Jordie. 

Clara knows enough to be content, but there’s a part that wants to know it all. But she can see the pain in his eyes, and the leather gloves on his hand, and she knows prying will do no good.

The thing that surprises her is Kaz’s voice. It’s deep, like his fathers, but it’s raspy. She knows it’s from something, the lost years. She asks. And it comes back to the root of it all. The Queen Lady’s Plague. That conversation drops.

“Ma?” He asks after a few minutes where they sat in each other's comfortable silence. 

She looks at him, “Yes?”

“Do you, by chance remember the name of the boat that took you?”

Clara hesitates, and Kaz pauses himself. “Sorry,” He corrects, “I shouldn’t have—”

“ _The Heir._ ”

Kaz glances at Inej, who tilts her head, thinking. “Ma, Inej...she takes down slavers. She has been for almost ten years now. If you want...she could find the men who took you.”

The indication is clear. 

She has to admit, there’s a part of her that craves that. Craves to take her pain out on those who inflicted it. For a second, she entertains the thought, the savage things she could do. But she wavers in her anger from day today. Maybe she would kill them today, and regret it for the rest of her life.

“No.” She says. “Find the ship, end their empire. I don’t need my revenge though.”

“Ma…” Kaz says, and her heart clenches at the look on his face. He doesn’t understand how one couldn’t coddle a grudge the way he does. _Brick by brick_ , she remembers. But her heart has long since grown old, and grudges don’t hold well. 

“I will be happy if no other human is taken by them. That is enough for me.” Kaz looks at Inej, then at his mom, and finally at Aleid and her face, not sharpened by cruelty as he is. He doesn’t understand. Clara wants him too. He never will.

“Do not make my capture, your burden, my boy,” She tells him. He swallows and looks at Inej, whose face is dark. It takes Clara a second to put the pieces together, but when she does, she understands why Kaz wants her to be angry the way he is.

He sees Inej in Clara. Or he sees Clara in Inej. And she sees the way he looks at her, like a ghost haunting a house, unwilling to let go. He wants to give them the knife because he loves them both and he hates the thought of them at the mercy of someone else.

The conversation falls silent until Kaz asks Aleid about school and she goes on a whole spiel about her friends and her teachers, particularly her math teacher who doesn’t like her for no good reason. Kaz’s eyes flash, but it’s gone before Aleid notices. Clara doesn’t have to wonder if Kaz would do anything to the teacher should he actually try something.

An hour later, they’re walking back to the hotel where Kaz and Inej are staying. Clara and Kaz walk ahead, talking quietly, while Inej walks with Aleid as she talks about her best friend ever, a Kaelish girl named Isla. 

Clara nearly jumps with surprise as Kaz grabs her hand, clinging to it the same way Aleid does. Clara can’t stop the wish that someday she’ll hold her son's bare hand again, but she knows how much that will ask of him, deep in her heart.

And all she wants, all she’s ever wanted, is for her children to be happy. 

And if that means reading them stories in a cold room above a restaurant, so be it. If that means understanding a demon, who cares? If that means bending over backwards and taking a knife to the gut, she would do it in a heartbeat.

Kaz and Jordie were the flames that kept her going in the cold, painful nights, spent in the house of a twisted Ravkan man. Aleid was her shining star in cold work nights. And now, one of her boys walks by her side, deriving something she knows she’ll never understand from her presence, and her little girl laughs, twinkling like her stars.

And her boy and her man rest in the clouds, watching over them. A handsome Ravkan captain named Yakov Zaytsev still writes to her, and she remembers the flowers he sent her when she told him when she had learned of Vidars fate.

Maybe one day, she’ll stand in a chapel again, and vow herself over rings to be his, and he’ll vow to be hers. Maybe Kaz will be there, in the back, smiling with a woman at his side. The present has its troubles, but she can only see them smoothing out as she walks with her girl and boy, with her family.


End file.
